GL tug Mississippi has appeared on this blog several times before. She’s a tiller-steered boat that looks good and still works hard although built in 1916!!
GL tug Ohio was built in 1903!! and originally served as a Chicago Milwaukee fireboat.
She’s recently changed roles again, as a result of her joining up with that green-hulled laker behind her. Recognize it?
Now she’ll live on more decades, centuries we hope.
Of course, the green hull is the Colonel, Col. James M. Schoonmaker. If you’re in Toledo area, check them out.
Many thanks to Paul for use of these photos, and reminding me, I have a bunch of Schoonmaker photos I’ve never posted. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow.
tugster: a waterblog 
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January 3, 2019 at 11:49 am
William Lafferty
The Ohio was originally the Milwaukee fireboat Cataract MFD No. 15, launched 2 June 1903 at the yard of the Ship Owners’ Dry Dock Company on the North Branch of the Chicago River, christened with a bottle of the drink that made Milwaukee famous, wielded by the daughter of a Milwaukee alderman. It was based on the model of the Chicago fireboat Illinois, built five years earlier by the Chicago Ship Building Company on Chicago’s other river and still documented as the tug John M. Selvick, but I think unused for the past year or so, tied up at almost exactly the spot it was built.
January 3, 2019 at 7:50 pm
tugster
William, Thx for the correction. Sheesh . . . I swear I’m losing my ability to read. Happy new year, too!